5 important things to know about Canadian cell phone plans.

The Canadian cell phone industry is confusing and difficult to understand. When comparing plans you have to deal with calling circle plans, specified evenings and weekend minutes, “anytime” minutes – its all so confusing. Well here are 5 items that you may not be aware of that you should know while you compare cell phone plans:

1. Long distance isn’t quite long distance

I always thought that if you were on a 100 min long distance plan that these minutes were in addition to my other minutes as I am paying extra for them. But what long distance plans do is to convert your regular minutes to long distance minutes. In other words, 100 of your 200 min plan is allocated for long distance usage as opposed to 200 regular mins plus 100 additional for long distance.

2. Unlimited is NOT unlimited

I always remember the customer who got an “unlimited” data plan and got a bill for $5,000 the following month. He was tethering his phone continuously for one month. Not an issue because he had an unlimited data plan or so he thought. Here are some things to consider about “unlimited” plans:

• Unlimited data – find out the exceptions, for example no tethering or whether there is a fair usage clause meaning that the plan is unlimited based on some expected usage amount.
• Unlimited incoming – typically unlimited incoming plans are limited to coverage areas. That is, once you are in your local coverage area, all incoming calls are unlimited and there are no additional fees, however outside of your local area there may be additional costs. Find out about your coverage area before you finalize your plan.
• Unlimited calling – I’m yet to see an unlimited calling plan that is nationwide meaning you can travel to anywhere in Canada and make unlimited calls at no additional cost to you. There are usually exceptions, for example unlimited calling available for a specified period, 3 months or 6 months or limited to a coverage area like a city or province, so ask before going off on a calling spree.
• Unlimited long distance – this plan converts your regular “anytime” minutes to long distance minutes. So if you have 400 anytime minutes then you ONLY Have 400 long distance minutes. So much for unlimited long distance calling.

3. Beware of Roaming

There are two types of roaming charges, voice and data roaming. If you will be traveling beware of the latter.  If you are like me you would think that if you never used your phone to call anyone then there should not be any roaming charges while traveling overseas. Well think again! You may still incur roaming charges once your phone is on as it checks your email servers, receive messages and emails even though you are not using it. The only way to avoid these charges would be to turn off your phone or turn off data roaming. You can save yourself hundreds of dollars by doing this in advance of your trip.

4. Beware of the dreaded first bill effect

Have you ever signed up for a $50 plan and when your first bill comes its $125? How? You’ve just been hit by the dreaded first bill effect.  There are a two reasons for this:

• Advanced billing – typically when you sign up for a postpaid contract they bill you for your next month plus charge you for your previous month – so $50 plan from your previous month + $50 plan for your next month’s usage

• Timing – you were placed on a later billing cycle so when you received your bill, there was a period in the previous cycle which you were billed for in this case $25. So your total bill is now $50 (advance billing) + $50 (previous month’s plan) + $25 (additional usage or overage from prior period) = $125.

How do you avoid this? Ask to be placed on a bill cycle closest to your activation date that way you won’t be hit with a double whammy!

5. Be wary of Brands

Have you ever told a Bell rep that they should give you a better deal because Virgin is offering a richer cell phone plan? Well you won’t be the first, but what you don’t know is that Bell won’t mind if you went with Virgin because you are still with Bell. Virgin is fully owned and operated by Bell, so is Solo. The same goes for Rogers and Fido and now their new wireless brand Chatr and for Telus and Koodo – branding combinations aimed to keep customers under one house or company.

The table below will help you navigate this web of brands:

These are key discussion points we have with customers who compare cell phone plans from different carriers on the myCELLmyTERMS.com portal. Customers are generally shocked to learn how confusing the industry is and we make it our goal to help them understand the stranger nuances involved in choosing the right plan for them.

#1. Understand your needs

What do you really use your cell phone for? Unlimited anything always seems attractive, however, “unlimited” typically comes with a hefty price tag.  I happen to have an unlimited data plan – a relic by today’s standards – but I only use 25MB of data per month.  So what do I with it? Well, I check and respond to emails repeatedly when on the road. I can’t say I enjoy typing emails on my phone so I keep it short; however, I do approximately 150 emails per month.  I don’t do a whole lot of web browsing from my device, in part because the experience isn’t the greatest, (HTC S720 – Slider Keyboard) but I do browse the web as more of a necessity. For example to win an argument or prove a point – I Google It -, to find a location or the contact information of a business or to get updated scores of games.  The cell phone market usually communicates data plans in gigabytes (GB), so to put it differently I use 0.025 GB of data per month.  So if I had a 1GB data plan I would be able to do 40 times as much as I do per month all things being equal.  The biggest culprit we hear off when it comes to exceeding one’s data plan is watching videos from YouTube on your cellphone.  That is the fastest way to run up a huge bill if you aren’t careful, so some common sense is required. Know where you stand in terms of data usage, check out this table to learn more about what you can do with the various data plans.

#2. Try not to be too aggressive

Here is an example of an overly aggressive proposal we saw recently:

If you are unclear what to ask for, create your proposal by leveraging our community deals as a starting point and customize the proposal further if you wish.  Our Dealer network is committed to offering you great value, so the only thing left to do is know a great deal when you see one.

#3. Know a good cell phone deal when you see one

A good cell phone deal really depends on your needs and that depends on how you put together your proposal to start with.  The myCELLmyTERMS website has a sophisticated ranking algorithm that presents the three most valuable deals by default, highlighting anything better than what you asked for in GREEN, anything shy of your ask in RED and CHECK MARKS to symbolize perfect matches.  While that speaks to the mechanics of understanding your deal, a good cell phone deal really depends on the features included and what’s being offered.  Understanding the value of these features and what they mean to you can be daunting and one of the reasons we put together this cell phone glossary to help understand what all the bells and whistles mean.

For many people “savings” is the name of the game. The following table highlights the likelihood of saving, depending on what you currently have (i.e. current terms) and what you are looking for (i.e. proposed terms).

So let’s put these three tips to work and get you the best cell phone deal on your terms.

Don’t panic there is hope… well sort of.

I recently got caught in the rain on my motorcycle. I didn’t realize that my iPhone was in an outside pocket that didn’t have a waterproof liner. I rode home in the pouring rain for over an hour. When I finally got home the phone was still on and drenched. The phone was so wet there was water dripping from the bottom of the phone. I immediately turned the phone off and begun to dry it with a towel. I removed the SIM card and noticed that the water had gotten into the phone. I got out a blow dryer and begun to blow cool air into the phone from every opening. (Never use hot air as there are several sensitive areas that use a delicate adhesive that may loosen and cause more damage). I continued drying the iPhone for 2 hours, alternating the direction of the air from the top of the device to the bottom. I read on several blogs that putting the iPhone in a bowl of rice or silica gel packets will help to dry the phone. Many of them mentioned to leave the phone for a week. Seems like good advice, but I couldn’t live without my phone for a week. After another 1/2hr of blow drying I decided to put the SIM card back in and turn the phone on. To my amazement the phone worked! There was nothing wrong; well that’s what I thought.

Five months later I noticed that my iPhone was acting strange. It would intermittently loose the carrier and have a full signal, making calls was impossible. To make a call I would have to turn the phone off and back on again, to reset the device. This was the only way to make a call. Five minutes later the same thing would happen. I decide to call my wireless provider to see if there was something they could do, they were useless, so I decided to go to the Apple store. The first thing the guy behind the counter said was that there was water damage. They know this because internally there is a small piece of material that turns red when exposed to water. You can actually see the material if you look at the bottom of the phone with a small light. He then proceeded to tell me that they do not replace iPhones that have water damage. He explained that even if the phone worked perfectly after being exposed to water, the water that was trapped inside begins to rust affecting certain internal parts; this makes the phone do crazy things. He was surprised the iPhone lasted as long as it did.

However, there is a replacement warranty that costs $199 for a 16 GB.  They will take your old iPhone (damaged) and give you a new one. This beats paying full price for a new iPhone.

The lesson here is, if your iPhone gets wet, you may be able to save it. Try doing what I did as well as some of the other tips suggested. Have patience and keep in mind that if you don’t dry the phone 100% you may find the phone acting weird in a few months.

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Push Email Notifications for iPhone

New APP from the guy who brought you Smart Dial, Memory Sweep, PushGmail and seven more apps. Now you can message your friends from one iPhone to another iPhone using Ping! Similar to the Blackberry Messenger, with push notifications. Using a unique Ping! ID you will be able to message your friends with an iPhone or iPod touch. Both parties will need a Ping! ID to use the service. The app is free and you will not be charged additional carrier charges, like text messaging fees.

The design and layout is similar to the SMS app and it behaves in the same way. Any messages you send will instantly arrive at the recipients’ iPhone. If you’re not using the phone, a notification will pop up on the home screen.

This is a money saving app, that will allow you and your friends to keep in contact for free instantly. The only catch is that you will have to convince your friends to install Ping! before you can start chatting.

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myCELLmyTERMS.com First Contest Winner

Congratulations to Colleen Cole of Brampton Ontario, the first place prize winner of  “Summer in Toronto” photo contest for her submission Dad at The Game.

Colleen Cole (snickerzmom) won the  “Summer in Toronto” photo contest on Lenzr.com and then had a choice to make…

On Sept 3rd 2009, she met Paul Peic of  myCELLmyTERMS inside the Arriba restaurant on the north side of the Rogers Centre in downtown Toronto.  They talked about her cell phone strategy as the Blue Jays rehearsed on left field below.  Colleen is a smart phone ‘early adopter’ who purchased a HipTop II phone (released as the ‘Sidekick’ in Canada) back in April 2005.  She was busy taking pictures with her phone back then too.

The meeting was the perfect end to an exciting promotion that just happened to coincide with another family visit to a Blue Jays game (playing New York Yankees) with her father, who is the subject of the winning photo.  Here’s Paul presenting Colleen with her choice of phone.

First prize was ‘any model smart phone of your choice’.

Colleen could select from either a Blackberry, or an iPhone, or a Palm Pre…

“This wasn’t a tough decision for me. I already have the iPhone 3G and love it. I will take the iPhone 3GS,”  Colleen answered without hesitation.

The winning photo was of Colleen’s father watching the Blue Jays game in the bleachers of the Rogers Centre.  They’ve been going to Jays games since the eighties, when they moved from Vancouver to Toronto.  With the exception of the players strike, they have managed to attend baseball games together every year for almost three decades now.

Dad at The Game won the Lenzr “summer in Toronto” photo contest with 112 green thumbs up, which was more positive votes that any of the other 58 pictures that were submitted.  Perhaps it was the caption which read, This is one of my favourite pictures of my Dad. For me, enjoying the game with my Dad is one of the best things about TO. It’s our time!

Our maybe it was the dramatic use of the Color Splash iPhone application which lets users render the entire photo black and white and then re colour portions using the touch screen that won the crowd’s appreciation? Its a nice effect when it’s done well.

Collen Cole can be found on @TalkingColleen on Twitter and look for photos by snickerzmom on Lenzr next time you’re on the site.

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Saving my iPhone Apps – from frustration to Success

A few days ago, I ran into a problem with my iPhone 3G. I tried running several of my apps and none of them were working. When I tried to run them, they immediately would turn off and go back to the iPhone home screen. After several attempts, I decided to reset the iPhone and then turn it back on to see if that would fix the problem… no luck.

I then tried to reboot the phone by holding down the Home button (bottom button with the square on it) and the Wake/Sleep button (located on the top right corner) , again no luck.I started thinking that I might  have to erase each app and upload each one again, or even worse completely restore the iPhone to the factory settings.  What about the apps I paid for? Would I have to purchase them again? Would all the information I saved on some of these apps be lost? I then started thinking that maybe the problem had to do with the latest version of  iTunes I downloaded a week prior.  Sitting here perplexed, I decided to access the app store from my iPhone to see if there were any updates available. There were no updates available. While I was at the app store, I decided to take a look at some of the new apps. I saw an app I didn’t have, so I downloaded it. I tried running it and it worked. Surprisingly after downloading this new app, and running it, it fixed the problem with all the other apps that were not working before! You can also fix the problem by deleting an existing app and replacing it with the same app. Not sure why this works, but it is a way easier fix then deleting everything and starting form scratch. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this solution will continue working. I will keep everyone posted if the problem persists.

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Blackberry’s Instant Messaging

Another great feature of the blackberry is its’  Instant Messaging capability. The ability to communicate in real time from one blackberry device to another is a real advantage for businesses and consumers alike, regardless of where they are located, for FREE,  unlike SMS/text messages. Amazing! Blackberry Messenger can be located by selecting the Instant Messaging icon . In order locate your PIN, which people will need in order to setup the IM function, go to Options>Status>then Scroll to PIN. To send your pin to someone, initially, you can text message them. In the body of the text, type in mypin and then hit the space bar. Your PIN automatically appears. The individual who receives your PIN number will add it to your contact information in their Address Book under PIN. Then that person will  go to the Instant Messaging Icon , left click and scroll to Add a Contact. Type in the name or email of individual you just updated in your Address Book and hit OK. The request will be sent to the recipient and all they need to do is ACCEPT your request. Then your ready to go!

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How to Play Your iPhone Music from the Home Screen 

There is a way to listen to music on the iPhone without having to unlock the phone with the slider bar. Most people stumble on this feature by accident.

When the iPhone is locked, you can access controls to listen to your music by double clicking the home button. A pop up window appears with a triangle for play, and both a rewind and fast forward icon. This saves time by allowing you to listening to your music without having to go through unlocking the phone with the slider bar, pressing iPod, selecting a song and then pressing Play. The only downfall is that it will only play the Playlist or Album that was playing before you locked the phone.

The image of the album will be displayed on the home screen with the controls overlaid. If you do not have an album image, your home screen will then be showed in the same manner. You can now listen to your music through your headphones, keep in mind that music will still be heard through the external speakers if the headphones are not connected, even if you have the silent switch on. The silent switch ignores the iPod, Alarm, Timer, and YouTube applications.

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The iPhone’s Earphones Do More Than You Think!

The little button on the earphone wire is used as a microphone and a multi function device. By clicking on this button once you can either answer or end a call.

It also has many uses when listening to your music.

While Listening to a Song

• clicking once pauses the song
• clicking twice brings you to the next track
• clicking three times takes you to the song prior to the one you are currently listening to

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Conference Calling on the iPhone

The iphone is the only phone that allows you to conference in up to five callers at the same time.

Adding callers to the conference call is simple. There are two steps to add a caller. First, use the add call feature while on a call, then click merge calls when connected to the second caller. This will start the conference call off. You can now add more callers following the same steps.   The coolest thing is that the call waiting feature still works on the iphone even when in conference, you can even add an individual that is calling on the other line to the conference!

While you are on a conference with everyone you can talk to an individual by clicking Private. You are now able to speak directly to that person while everyone else is still in conference with each other, when you are done the private conversation you can than both join back in to the conference.

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